It is normally left up to a presiding person such as a chairman to direct a conference, and the progress of the conference depends heavily on the skill of the presiding person. As an apparatus which expedites the proceedings of a conference, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-12060 discloses a system which reports remaining time, breaks, etc. in relation to a remote conferencing system. Also, Japanese Patent Publication 7-31701 discloses a system which draws up a program of a conference taking into consideration the timetables and the like of conference participants.